Benjamin Britten’s Four Sea Interludes, Op. 33a, is a concert suite extracted from his opera Peter Grimes, first performed in 1945. Britten selected four orchestral interludes from the opera and arranged them as a self-contained work for the...

Benjamin Britten composed Soirées musicales, Op. 9, in 1935–36, drawing on melodies by Gioachino Rossini, particularly from Rossini’s vocal collection Soirées musicales of the 1830s. The suite grew out of incidental music...

REPRINT SERIES  Alan Rawsthorne’s Symphonic Studies is a large-scale orchestral work completed in 1938 and first performed at the ISCM Festival in Warsaw in 1939. It was one of the pieces that established his reputation early on, and...

REPRINT SERIES Vaughan Williams’s All hail the power is a 1938 arrangement of the eighteenth-century English hymn tune Miles Lane, traditionally associated with Edward Perronet’s text and the music of William Shrubsole. It is written for...

Walter Piston’s The Incredible Flutist is a one-act ballet composed in 1938 with a libretto by Piston and Hans Wiener; it is his only work for the stage and was premiered by the Boston Pops under Arthur Fiedler on 30 May 1938. The work paints a...

The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, Op. 34 (subtitle Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell) was written by Benjamin Britten in 1945 for a British Ministry of Education film, Instruments of the Orchestra; the film version (with narration...

REPRINT SERIES Irving G. Fine’s Diversions for orchestra (1959–60) is an orchestration of four short piano pieces that Fine scored for full orchestra (with optional saxophones). The set comprises Little Toccata, Flamingo Polka, Koko’s...

Grażyna Bacewicz’s Violin Concerto No. 2 (1945) is a three-movement work—I. Allegro ma non troppo (with substantial cadenza), II. Andante, III. Vivo—combining neoclassical clarity with propulsive rhythmic drive. The concerto was written...

Benjamin Britten’s Symphony for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 68, was composed in 1963 and dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich, who gave the premiere with Britten conducting the Moscow Philharmonic on 12 March 1964. The work’s title reflects...

Benjamin Britten’s Simple Symphony, Op. 4, was written in 1933–34 and is wholly derived from themes he composed as a child; it is scored for string orchestra (also playable as a string quartet) and typically lasts about 16–18 minutes in...

REPRINT SERIES  Manuel de Falla’s “Interlude and Dance”  is the principal purely orchestral episode extracted from the second act of La vida breve. It is presented as a single orchestral scena that moves from a secco,...

Manuel de Falla’s Suite No. 2, Three Dances from El sombrero de tres picos, is an orchestral extraction of the principal dances from Part II of the 1919 ballet. he suite is scored for a medium-to-large orchestra with an emphasis on percussion...

REPRINT SERIES Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Suite for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 30 (1913), is an early orchestral showpiece that transforms a set of piano character pieces into a three-movement suite for piano solo with orchestral accompaniment. The three...

Manuel de Falla’s Suite No. 1, Scenes and Dances from El sombrero de tres picos, is an orchestral extraction of the principal dances from Part I of the 1919 ballet. Musically the suite condenses the ballet’s Andalusian...

REPRINT SERIES  Jacob Gade’s Bryllup på Himmelpind (1940) is a rustic orchestral suite evoking childhood memories of village weddings near his birthplace; the work was originally in six movements but was revised and published in a...

Danza ritual del fuego (Ritual Fire Dance) is the best-known movement from Manuel de Falla’s ballet El amor brujo, originally composed as a gitanería (gypsy piece) around 1915 and later presented in orchestral versions associated with the...

Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Flourish for Glorious John (1957) was written as a short ceremonial opener for Sir John Barbirolli to inaugurate the Hallé Orchestra’s centenary season; it is a compact fanfare-like orchestral piece lasting...

REPRINT SERIES  Arthur Honegger’s Prélude, Fugue et Postlude (H.71a) is an orchestral suite in three linked sections—Prélude, Fugue and Postlude—arranged in 1948 from material associated with his earlier Amphion...